Brucelmartin's Blog

Tums Anyone?

brucelmartin — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 18:05:15 +0000

I guess I did not get the heavenly hint when I first saw it but I should have. I am not sure if it was a hint or just irony, but I have enjoyed telling several others about it over the past couple of days. I love communion. I grew up taking communion under the tutelage of my “preacher-dad.” I did not know much of the preparation that went into the Lord’s Table, but I watched him many times oversee the distribution of the elements and heard him numerous times read long passages of scripture as the elements were passed up and down the aisles. Since at our church we do not have our communion service every week, we decided to have communion when a month has a 5th Sunday. It just so happened that this 5th Sunday was Memorial Day weekend; again, a great time to have the memorial Lord’s Table, at least that is what I thought. Just a little glitch, though. Both of the men who were to take care of preparing the elements were going to be absent so instead of delegating the job to others, I just took the job on myself. As usual, I almost forgot about the scheduled event, but late Saturday night it occurred to me that the next day was communion. I panicked a little until my faithful and beautiful wife immediately agreed to help me prepare. She knew where everything was because she had helped the deacons wives prepare it on several other occasions. I did know that we had enough cups and communion bread so all I would need to do is go to the grocery first thing on Sunday morning and purchase the Welches juice—only the best for communion, you know. I went through the self-checkout line with no problem. The juice was even on sale! I paid for the juice, reached up for the receipt and noticed I had a coupon. I like coupons. I pulled the coupon out of the tray and thought, “Now this might be a good coupon.” It turned out to be a great one; $3.00 off Tums. Was it just ironic or just a hint? It was a little hectic that day. Along with all the other things I do every Sunday I had to get the elements; I had to make and oversee the preparations; I had to recruit servers; I had to meet with the worship team to make sure they were ready for the songs in the communion service; I had to get my Powerpoint ready for the short message before communion; and then I had to oversee the service. It was not until the final moments of the service while the juice was being served by the deacons that I believe I heard the Lord speak to me. As I sat there with my head bowed in reverence and prayer, it was like He said, “You have spent a lot of time preparing everything else for this service to honor me but are you prepared to honor me yourself?” It was then that I remembered the Tums. Here was my prayer, “Lord, you warned me with the Tums not to do this in the flesh but I did it anyway. Forgive me for making this service more about the process of communion than about communing with You.” I am going to keep my Tums coupon as a reminder to keep my focus on the main thing and not to become too focused on the process.

Seven Pounds and no more!

brucelmartin — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 18:59:37 +0000

SPOILER ALERT … If you haven’t seen the movie Seven Pounds with Will Smith and plan on seeing it, then stop reading my post because I plan to spoil it big-time for you. Still with me? Don’t say I didn’t warn you! Before I go on, just because I refer to a movie does not mean that I endorse that movie. In the movie Seven Pounds, the main character is severely conflicted over an accident he caused killing seven people; one of which was his precious wife. Throughout the movie, Ben Thomas–the main character played by Will Smith–believes he can correct all that wrong by giving “pounds of flesh,” so to speak, for the horrendous pain and suffering his apparent selfishness and self-centered actions caused that one night. He finds unfortunate yet well deserving people to which he can donate bone morrow, a kidney, his eyes and even his heart. He meets a gifted blind piano player to whom he wants to give his eyes and a beautiful young lady in desperate need of a heart. He pretended to be an IRS agent interviewing people for delinquent taxes but instead “borrowed” his brothers identity and credentials to search the IRS computers to find some of these deserving people. A lot of the story revolves around the young lady to get his heart. At first she wins his heart in love and then gets his physical heart in an operation. When no other solution can be found, he kills himself by being stung by a rare jelly fish. This movie is officially SPOILED!

Although I did not like certain parts of the movie on moral grounds, it was one of those movies that makes you sit back and think about the importance of family, life, happiness, disability, the cost of mistakes, and even the lengths one might go to set things straight. Emotions swell at the climatic moment of the movie when Ben makes the ultimate sacrifice of giving his life for people he barely knows or even that one person he had come to love. My wife and I talked about the roller-coaster of emotions brought on by the movie and I mentioned the awesome sacrifice he was willing to make even for people he did not know all that well. She then reminded me of a very important point I had seemingly overlooked; he did it only for people that deserved it. What a difference between what Ben Thomas did in Seven Pounds and what Jesus Christ did for us when he gave his life for us on the cross. It is almost as if the Apostle Paul had prophetically previewed the movie when he wrote to the Romans, “For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” If God would have looked down and chosen only the good and well deserving of His son’s death, then, I dare say, none of us would have been worthy and there would have been no sacrifice. Ben Thomas’ girl, Emily Posa, is dying without any hope unless Ben gives his own heart to her. He does and she lives. We are dying in sin unless God makes a way. He does and we live. How did we win God’s heart? We didn’t do a thing but He loved us anyway.

P.S. If that spoiler was not good enough for you, then check out http://www.themoviespoiler.com/Spoilers/sevenpounds.html.

Good discourse?

brucelmartin — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 20:12:16 +0000

Rene Descartes, the father of modern philosophy famous for the saying, “I think, therefore I am,”–evidently I have taught some non-existing students–rejected religious authority in a quest for scientific and philosophical knowledge.

I thought I would increase some brain matter and stretch my power of reasoning by reading his A Discourse on Method Meditations and Principles. I knew I was in trouble when I struggled with the “introduction” section but I thought I would plow through it, anyway. After reading the “introduction,” I opened to the first page and read “Good sense is …” Now, wait a minute. Did the great philosopher Rene Descartes just begin his treatise with the word “good?” OK, I can understand a desire to find a reasonable answer to life by looking within logic and science but why start with an ethical word that transcends human reason? The ethical understanding of “good” belongs to God not to human understanding. I am not saying that there is not a sense of good within humanity but I am saying that any sense of good expressed in humanity has its roots in creation and our being made in God’s image. Any “good” that anyone might see does not have its root in humanity but in deity. Rene is trying to understand the physical by looking at the natural but his argument begins with the ethical and that belongs to the supernatural. Don’t get me wrong, I read past the first word but even his first sentence is flawed. That is another post, for sure.

What do you think? Is it fair for a naturalist to rely on the supernatural to prove his naturalism while denying the supernatural? That is confusing even for me!

What about cremation?

brucelmartin — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 18:25:22 +0000

I am often asked about whether or not cremation is biblical. The answer is simple in that the Bible says nothing about cremation. Nowhere in the Bible will you find a verse or passage speaking about how we are to bury our dead. We do find Jesus commenting rather harshly to a disciple who wanted to go back and bury his father when he said, “let the dead bury their own dead,” but he was speaking of something far different than our funeral customs. In Jesus’ day, when a person died they placed them almost immediately in the tomb. One year from the burial someone would go into the tomb, collect the bones, and place them in another box. On that one year anniversary of the death the family would gather again and have another memorial service for their dead loved one. Jesus was confronting the man’s taking a year off. Still, nowhere in the Bible does it speak of how we are bury our dead.

What I will say about cremation is that it is not the way Christians have practiced funerals over the years. We have a lot of cultural and biblical history surrounding special care for the bodily remains of our loved ones. The Old Testament is replete with the special care of burying the dead–Abraham with Sarah; Jacob with Rachel; even Moses (see Jude). Even in the New Testament we know how they took care of Lazarus’ body and all four Gospels tell us how they took special care with Jesus’ body; even wanting to come again to anoint it with perfumes only to find it gone! The greatest reason the Christian community has taken care of the body for funeral is based on Paul’s writings that at the resurrection God will raise our bodies and give us new ones.

Is that to say that cremation is bad? No, it is just not the way it has been done in the past. With funerals costing up into the tens of thousands of dollars, a cremation service for under $3K is very appealing. Funeral homes will even prepare the body for viewing and then cremate the body after the service. There is no right or wrong answer here; just preferences. By the way, in the resurrection, I do not want my old body back; I want a new one. In case you are wondering, God does not need my old body to make me a new one.

Hello world!

brucelmartin — Thu, 27 May 2010 19:13:56 +0000

All right. I am usually a little late at coming at things but it is now time to get into blogging. Not just because everyone else is doing it … well, maybe I am doing it because everyone else is doing it, but I am also blogging to keep in touch and go off a little about things that may be a little too much for the “traditionals” out there. So, my first blog is simply a hearty “Hello!” I am not sure I will be a daily poster but I plan to post at least once a week or sporadically when something catches my fancy, tickles my conscience or frustrates me into bombastic ramblings. Who knows? I appreciate your comments and I look forward to adding my “two bits” to an outstanding plethora of technological online opinionated musings.